It's certainly a thrill: 50 years since 'Sgt. Pepper's'

Friday

May 26, 2017 at 4:03 PMMay 26, 2017 at 4:47 PM

By Ed Symkus, Correspondent

Let’s play a game of pretend. It is not 2017. It is 1967. June 2, 1967. I’m holding in my hands the brand-new Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” I can’t even slit it open. I’m too busy gawking at the cover: The Beatles in colorful satin outfits, holding brass and wind instruments; flowers spelling out their name on the ground in front of them; all sorts of people posed around them, from Edgar Allan Poe to Sonny Liston, from Marilyn Monroe to Stan Laurel. What’s going on here? And what about the back of it? Who ever heard of printing the song lyrics on an album jacket?

I listen to it all the way through, from the first sounds of an orchestra tuning up to the final 41-second fade-out of a piano. Then I play the whole darn thing again.

Immediate thoughts: This isn’t the best Beatles album as far as consistent song quality. In my mind, that honor still goes to “Rubber Soul,” which came out a year and a half earlier. Yet, like that album, and “Revolver,” which followed it, “Sgt. Pepper” marks another huge departure for the Beatles. Taken as a piece, there’s never been anything like it. The songs (and there are some great ones here), some of which neatly blur into one another, are the most mature they’ve yet written and performed, and this is easily producer George Martin’s most innovative creation; he seems to have invented new sounds, and layered voices and instruments in a more complicated yet clean way than ever done before.

And so, the album opens with that tuning up, mixed with some “live audience” murmurs, before exploding into the title song, with Paul McCartney taking on a master of ceremonies role, welcoming listeners in a shouted lead vocal (“We hope you will enjoy the show.”), blasting out a searing guitar lead, and being accompanied, along with his fellow Beatles’ voices, by a French horn quartet. The song segues right into the uplifting and poppy “With a Little Help from My Friends,” spotlighting an always-welcome Ringo vocal. Or more accurately, a constantly shifting call and response between Ringo and the other Beatles.

I note that Ringo keeps repeating the line, “I get high with a little help from my friends,” and I can’t help connecting that thought to lots of druggy lyrics in the Lennon-sung following number, the flowing and hallucinatory “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” I mean, c’mon: cellophane flowers, rocking horse people, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes? But it’s also a driving production, with three booming drum beats that lead into each chorus.

There’s a tie between the rhythm and lyrics for what’s best about “Getting Better.” The introduction of two staccato guitars soon brings in a snare drum and cymbals, then a swooping bass line. But it’s probably the initially troubling then hopeful words about an angry man who’s coming to grips with his bad behavior and is trying to change it ... through love, that make the song memorable.

With dreamy, high harmonies and a guitar’s treble turned way up, “Fixing a Hole” is well placed in the album’s song order in that it’s another one about someone trying to better himself and his situation, in this case by not letting bad influences get in his way. The album’s most breathtakingly beautiful and haunting song, “She’s Leaving Home,” goes into story mode, telling of a (probably teen) daughter who, in the minds of her parents, is abandoning them, and her mother, sung by Paul in a quavering voice, can’t understand why. The sad ballad is reminiscent of “Eleanor Rigby,” though not as gloomy, and features only John and Paul singing, complemented by strings and a harp.

The mood is lightened considerably with “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” boasting a carnival-like sound and telling of a carnival act, replete with harmonicas, organs, and a calliope. The mention of the feature performer Henry the Horse, who “dances the waltz,” wittily shifts the song into 3/4 time. So, yes, you can waltz to it.

The joyously cacophonous ending of Side One leads, alas, to George Harrison’s only composition at the start of Side Two: the dreary, ponderous, oh-so-serious, Eastern-influenced “Within You Without You,” a follow-up, of sorts, to his “Love You To” on “Revolver.” It’s skippable.

But the album’s mood bounces back – literally and figuratively – with the wistful, happy, old-timey “When I’m 64,” and Paul, a harmonious clarinet trio and lilting vocals behind him, singing about his far-off golden years. The upbeat attitude is kept in “Lovely Rita,” another story song, about a London meter maid for whom our protagonist falls. Things even get a little racy when Paul sings, “Took her home, I nearly made it, sitting on a sofa with a sister or two.” A real treat here is the speeded up piano solo by George Martin, similar to his contribution on “Rubber Soul’s” “In My Life.”

The album’s most insane song is “Good Morning Good Morning,” featuring a rooster’s introductory crow, bizarre time changes, a blazing, slightly distorted horn arrangement, some of Ringo’s best drumming, another wild guitar solo from Paul, and a riot of animal sounds ranging from chirping birds to roaring lions and galloping horses, before receding into clucking chickens. Coincidentally (or is it shrewdly?), the first guitar notes of the following song, a brief, raucous reprise of the opener, sound just like those chickens. Its lyrics (“We hope you have enjoyed the show.”) actually say it’s the end of the album, but it smoothly and brilliantly segues into an unexpected encore, the epic “A Day in the Life.”

This consists of two separate songs – one by John and one by Paul – linked together by an orchestral section in which the players slowly and loudly play an ensemble glissando from lowest note to highest note. Toward the end of Paul’s part, and just before going back into John’s, an eerie chorus of vocal aaahs is eventually overwhelmed and swallowed up by the orchestra, ever-growing in volume. Then another, even more intense orchestral glissando is capped off with an attack of multiple hands on a piano keyboard, resulting in a very long sustained note, and a final fade. The song is exhausting. So is the album. In a good way. As printed at the bottom right on the back, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”